At the end of World War II, thousands of families from the five boroughs of the City of New York, including returning GIs, began to settle the suburbs of Long Island. The first wave that settled in Nassau County, New York, was approximately 50% Catholic, 25% Protestant, and 25% Jewish. In 1947, 300 families moved into Levittown, which was once farmland and potato fields in the heart of Nassau County, and the northeastern portion of the Town of Hempstead. By 1951, 17,000 Levitt homes were constructed in a 7-mile radius, marking the first-mass produced suburb in the United States of America. Nassau County and Hempstead would become home to the “Dashing Commuter.”